Departures

Takita Yojiro's Departures (Okuribito) focuses on one Japanese death custom that Western seldom, if ever, experience: the ministrations of the nokanshi (literally, “encoffining master”), a professional who cleanses and clothes a body. The film's nokanshi hero elevates a simple task to a refined ritual with practiced, elegant movements, while communicating a compassion for the deceased. This, he wordlessly shows the survivors, is no mere lifeless body, but a person worthy of respect and love. With his expert touch, he brings the dead back to a semblance of life.

The film begins with the hero, Kobayashi Daigo (Motoki Masahiro), already a nokanshi, working on a most unusual subject - a young transgender man who has died as a woman, though his relatives have neglected to inform Daigo and his boss, Sasaki (Yamazaki Tsutomu), of the fact. Daigo's discovery of his subject's sex is funny in Takita's typical black comic vein - and indicates that Departures is going to be hard to describe, but let's try: it's about finding your bliss, even if the world thinks your bliss is odd, icky and a marriage breaker.
After this intro, we see Daigo in his previous life as a newly out-of-work cellist.

With no prospects for another job, he and his perky young wife Mika (Hirosue Ryoko) move to his hometown in rural Yamagata. There he answers an ad for what he thinks is a travel agency and learns from the cheery, blowzy receptionist (Yo Kimiko) and later from the gruff, if welcoming, president (Yamazaki Tsutomu) that they send clients, not to Hawaii, but to the next world. Daigo takes the job anyway and discovers that he has an aptitude for it.
As a child, Daigo was abandoned by his father and left alone after the death of his much-beloved mother. As a nokanshi, he finds that by helping others accept their losses, he can better deal with his own. The job is also a natural outlet for his musician's sense of beauty and order. Mika, however, can't get over the yuck factor, as well as the social shame of her husband's profession. She gives him a choice: dead people or her.

As Daigo, Motoki Masahiro gives the performance of his long career - restrained, but fully expressive of his character's many sides. Yamazaki Tsutomu, as the crusty pro Sasaki, gets laughs with the sort of irascible, scampish shtick he has been perfecting since playing the truck driver/ramen guru in Itami Juzo's Tampopo (1985). At the same time, Sasaki serves as a credible role model for his younger colleague - a pro who thoroughly enjoys the pleasures of life, from the food on his table to the plants he surrounds himself with.